Harris Corp. celebrates 1 million F-35 parts delivered

Harris held a celebration Thursday for a 1 million milestone of delivery of F-35 parts to Lockheed Martin. Video by Malcolm Denemark

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On Thursday in Malabar, Harris Corp. celebrated the delivery of its millionth part for the F-35 jet program led by Lockheed Martin. Bryant Henson, Vice President/General Manager, Avionics Business Unit, Electronics Systems for Harris, stands by a Lockheed Martin F-35 simulator that employees were able to try out.(Photo: MALCOLM DENEMARK/FLORIDA TODAY)Buy Photo

No facility makes more parts for each F-35 Joint Strike Fighter — more than 1,700 per jet — than an unassuming Harris Corp. building off U.S. 1 in Malabar.

On Thursday, the avionics facility's 350 employees celebrated the delivery recently of their millionth component to the F-35 program's prime contractor, Lockheed Martin.

“A million is huge,” said Eric Branyan, vice president of F-35 supply chain management at Lockheed. “Nobody else on the airplane over its whole life will ship a million of anything.”

Harris now is in its 17th year supporting the program also referred to as the Lightning II, which expects to deliver planes through 2040 and fly them through 2070.

"That’s a giant enterprise, and it’s just starting," said Branyan.

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With a lunchtime ceremony Thursday in Malabar, Harris Corp. celebrated delivering its millionth part for the F-35 Lightning II program led by Lockheed Martin. Workers wore blue shirts commemorating the production milestone.(Photo: MALCOLM DENEMARK/FLORIDA TODAY)

Harris says its F-35 work generates hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue annually, and the business is growing: last year it won two more contracts from Lockheed to provide cockpit display units and memory systems.

The 16,000-square-foot production floor in Malabar has doubled in size over the past four years, and is expected to expand by another 12,000 square feet.

Components made there include liquid-cooled avionics chassis for systems such as radar and mission computers; antennas that allow F-35s to communicate with each other in flight during stealth mode; and network interface units enabling high-speed communications.

The Department of Defense so far has deployed 280 F-35s, which come in three variants, to 15 bases in nine countries around the world, with 190 more in production.

"Harris has made the investment in our manufacturing facilities and capacity to make sure we’re ready to support that ramp (up in production) today," said Bryant Henson, vice president and general manager of the Avionics Business Unit in Harris' Electronic Systems division.

In total, the Pentagon plans to buy more than 2,400 planes for nearly $400 billion, making it the DOD's "most costly and ambitious acquisition program," according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office.

"Although the estimated F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program acquisition costs have decreased since 2014, the program continues to face significant affordability challenges," the GAO reported in 2016.

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At a lunchtime ceremony Thursday in Malabar, Ed Zoiss, president of Harris Electronic Systems, congratulated employees who recently delivered their millionth part to the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program led by prime contractor Lockheed Martin.(Photo: MALCOLM DENEMARK/FLORIDA TODAY)

Ed Zoiss, president of Harris Electronic Systems, said the company has reduced its costs by 64 percent, promising to save $800 million over the program's life.

"It’s very important to get the jet down below $80 million, and Harris is a key contributor to continuing to drive affordability for the aircraft," he said.

The Malabar employees celebrated Thursday with a barbecue lunch, pop music and blue “F-35 Milestone” T-shirts. They had the chance to fly an F-35 flight simulator, where a Lockheed instructor guided pilots from takeoff from Nellis Air Force Base in Las Vegas through kills of two air targets and one on the ground.

"In the end, the F-35 is really an instrument of our national policy, and we allow the aviators really to carry out our nation’s will by our strong performance of the items that we provide to the aircraft day in and day out," said Zoiss.

Contact Dean at 321-242-3668 or jdean@floridatoday.com. And follow on Twitter at @flatoday_jdean and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/FlameTrench.

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